William Carleton, Counselor @ Law: When Privacy Policies Become Smokescreens

When Privacy Policies Become Smokescreens

By William Carleton // October 22, 2010 in Privacy, Social Media

Some social networking companies use privacy policies like politicians use talking points.

What’s more, some social networking companies use privacy policies not simply to avoid answering relevant questions, but to actually frame the questions being asked!

Thus, we see journalists and bloggers dutifully attempting to explain how a given privacy policy was set up, how certain fairly incomprehensible provisions were breached, what the company means to do to fix the problem or adapt the policy – all this even when the company in question is a notorious repeat offender!

Privacy policies are important. I read ‘em, write ‘em, deal with ‘em all the time. Most of the time, new and emerging businesses approach them in the best of faith.

But when a company engages in behavior that repeatedly violates whatever latest version of its privacy policy it recently amended for the umpteenth time, ostensibly to address its last round of violations, we should stop doing that company the favor of parsing its privacy policy as though it were actual policy. Such parsing can be left to the FTC. The rest of us should deem it white noise, a smokescreen, a set of political talking points to avoid the business strategy afoot.

Image from the US Navy and in the public domain, via Wikimedia.

Business plans don’t have to be public! But when a social media company deploys a privacy policy as a red herring, you can pretty safely assume it has an aggressive business plan that involves “baiting and switching” with its user base.

Vigorous users of social media have a high tolerance for a lack of privacy. They don’t care as much about “privacy” as they do knowing that they will remain the “customer” to whom the business will remain loyal.

The problem, with some of the more mainstream sites, is that less savvy consumers are more easy to manipulate with vague assurances about “privacy” and “security,” seemingly backed up with standard looking boilerplate, even as those consumers are unwittingly engaged in performing free market research on themselves to supply, without pay, to interests who typically won’t even be identified in the privacy policy.

Here’s what such a company’s privacy policy will never say:

“We are experimenting in every way we can think of to exploit the information you provide or reveal to us, together with what we can piece together about your social graph, in order to monetize that information and to market products and services you will pay for. Our competitive advantage is that other channel marketers have to pay for such research, but we’re getting ours in exchange for the forum we provide for you and your friends, while we watch and take notes.”

via wac6.com

Posted via email from Whistleblower